1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and process for underwriting insurance applications, and more particularly to a system and process for underwriting insurance applications based on multivariate adaptive regression splines.
2. Description of Related Art
Classification is the process of assigning an input pattern to one of a predefined set of classes. Classification problems exist in many real-world applications, such as medical diagnosis, machine fault diagnosis, handwriting character recognition, fingerprint recognition, and credit scoring, to name a few. Broadly speaking, classification problems can be categorized into two types: dichotomous classification, and polychotomous classification. Dichotomous classification deals with two-class classification problems, while polychotomous classification deals with classification problems that have more than two classes.
Classification consists of developing a functional relationship between the input features and the target classes. Accurately estimating such a relationship is key to the success of a classifier. Insurance underwriting is one of these classification problems. The underwriting process consists of assigning a given insurance application, described by its medical and demographic records, to one of the risk categories (also referred to as rate classes). A trained individual or individuals traditionally perform insurance underwriting. A given application for insurance (also referred to as an “insurance application”) may be compared against a plurality of underwriting standards set by an insurance company. The insurance application may be classified into one of a plurality of risk categories available for a type of insurance coverage requested by an applicant. The risk categories then affect the premium paid by the applicant, e.g., the higher the risk category, higher the premium. A decision to accept or reject the application for insurance may also be part of this risk classification, as risks above a certain tolerance level set by the insurance company may simply be rejected.
Insurance underwriting often involves the use of a large number of features in the decision-making process. The features typically include the physical conditions, medical information, and family history of the applicant. Further, insurance underwriting frequently has large number of risk categories (rate classes). The risk category of an insurance application is traditionally determined by using a number of rules/standards, which have the form of, for example, “if the value of feature x exceeds a, then the application can't be rate class C, i.e., the application has to be lower than C”. Such manual underwriting, however, is not only time-consuming, but also often inadequate in consistency and reliability. The inadequacy becomes more apparent as the complexity of insurance applications increases.
There can be a large amount of variability in the insurance underwriting process when individual underwriters perform it. Typically, underwriting standards cannot cover all possible cases and variations of an application for insurance. The underwriting standards may even be self-contradictory or ambiguous, leading to an uncertain application of the standards. The subjective judgment of the underwriter will almost always play a role in the process. Variation in factors such as underwriter training and experience, and a multitude of other effects can cause different underwriters to issue different, inconsistent decisions. Sometimes these decisions can be in disagreement with the established underwriting standards of the insurance company, while sometimes they can fall into a “gray area” not explicitly covered by the underwriting standards.
Further, there may be an occasion in which an underwriter's decision could still be considered correct, even if it disagrees with the written underwriting standards. This situation can be caused when the underwriter uses his/her own experience to determine whether the underwriting standards should be adjusted. Different underwriters may make different determinations about when these adjustments are allowed, as they might apply stricter or more liberal interpretations of the underwriting standards. Thus, the judgment of experienced underwriters may be in conflict with the desire to consistently apply the underwriting standards.
Other drawbacks may also exist.